"Donovan Hock?" Ashley wracked her brain for some recollection of who the man Shepard had just mentioned was. "The name sounds familiar, but I don't think I know him."
"You wouldn't," Liara told her. "He was someone Shepard encountered during the time the Normandy was a Cerberus ship."
The commander nodded in agreement. "Hock was this scumbag arms dealer who'd killed Kasumi's old partner and stole his greybox. I went with her to steal it back. The mission was supposed to be low-key, but he saw us coming a mile away. I wound up having to take my usual approach to these things, and the op ended with us blowing up the man's gunship with him still on-board. That generally tends to be fatal."
"So does being spaced," Ashley pointed out, "And you're still here."
"True enough," the commander conceded. "The man did own quite the collection of high-end military exotica. I guess it wouldn't really shock me if he had a trick or two up his sleeve." She shrugged. "Or maybe he really is dead. This could be a relative or someone else using his identity. He was a pretty big player in the galactic black market and the name is probably worth something to somebody."
"Well, whoever they are, they have Sha'ira," Ashley reminded the commander. "Any clue where to look for them?"
The Shadow Broker entered a few more commands into her terminal. "These banking records suggest that the buyer is still operating out of Hock's old home on Bekenstein. I am sending you the coordinates now along with a copy of Shepard's mission report. It has a layout of the estate and some details about security you may find useful."
"Bekenstein?" the commander asked, surprised. "I thought the Reapers destroyed that colony."
"Just the industrial centers," Liara clarified. "It was a very quick strike and some of the more isolated settlements such as Hock's estate survived. I imagine the Reapers planned to come back for them once the galaxy's more organized resistance had been eliminated."
Shepard shook her head. "That place was a fortress. You think you'll be able to get in okay, Ash? If you wait, I can try to find you some more back-up."
"Sha'ira's waited long enough," Ashley told her commander grimly. "I've got Zaeed and this krogan; we'll think of something."
"She may be a crazy bitch but at least she has decent taste in guns."
They were all gathered around the table in the frigate's war room: Ashley, Gorax, and Zaeed, and the grizzled old mercenary was looking about as pleased with himself as his dour disposition would allow. An impressive collection of rifles, pistols, and grenades sat in-between them, while along the wall lay a couple of spare suits of black armor that had belonged to Ilara. The asari was better endowed and a bit less muscled than Ashley, but there was enough adjustability built into such things that the Spectre suspected they'd do just fine.
Ashley picked up a Viper sniper rifle, examining the custom sighting mods installed in it before setting the gun aside. "You did good," she told Zaeed. "And we're gonna need this firepower. An arms dealer named Donovan Hock, or at least somebody posing as him, is the one who bought Sha'ira and he's holed up on Bekenstein inside a veritable fortress. When we go in, I imagine it's going to get pretty ugly."
"What do you mean 'we'?", Gorax groused. "Our deal was that I let you out and took you where you wanted to go. Breaking into fortresses wasn't part of our deal."
"You pissing you're goddamn armor over some arms dealer?", Zaeed taunted but Ashley stopped him.
"No, he's right. So let me make you a new deal. This guy we're going up against is rich. I mean '12-bedroom house on Ilium' rich, and he likes to collect expensive art and weapons. If you help us take him out, I'm sure you can find something there to make it worth your while."
The krogan growled, a low, guttural sound that reminded Ashley of an engine revving up. "Fine," he agreed. "But I want something else too. If Ilara comes after me for helping you, I need your promise that you'll help me kill her."
"Sure," the marine agreed, and honestly, she was happy enough to make the deal. In spite or perhaps because of the strange way the Ardat-Yakshi had made her feel, she had an undeniable urge to put the woman down hard. Indeed, a part of her thought they should have waited for Ilara to return to the ship back on Helfstra, but her haste to get to Sha'ira had taken priority over everything else.
"Great," Zaeed snorted, "So we're all on-board. How do we do the bloody job?"
"We head in the front door," she replied. "I've looked at the files on the this place, and stealth isn't going to work. Shepard was an experienced N-7 commando with the best thief in the galaxy for a partner and her mission still turned into a firefight. No way we're going to do better than that."
"So we just go in shooting?" The krogan smiled a toothy grin. "Sounds like fun, but I'm not looking to get killed just yet. After all, you're boss just cured the genophage. I've got a lot to live for."
Ashley shook her head. "I said we were going in the front door, not that we're shooting our way through it. I've got a plan."
Gorax laughed. "I hope it's better than the one where you stab yourself in the gut."
"It worked, didn't it?" Despite the bravado with which she delivered her protest though, the Spectre wasn't entirely confident. In her heart, she felt like she couldn't have come this far just to fail now, but her head was reminding her that trusting in sentiments like that was a good way to get dead.
After the devastation they'd seen from space as their ship approached Bekenstein, it made Ashley angry how untouched Donovan Hock's estate was. So many priceless treasures had been lost in the Reaper War; the Sistine Chapel, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower and countless more parts of humanity's heritage were gone and it hardly seemed right that the clichéd rolling lawns and gilded gates belonging to a piece of trash like this had been left intact.
As the three warriors approached the entrance to the massive compound though, the marine did her best to keep her face all business, allowing herself only a mumbled, "Once more unto the breech, dear friends," as they drew close to the gate. The longer these bastards didn't realize how much she wanted to shoot them the better.
At the sight of her group, the pair of armored guards near the gates started looking jumpy, both of them raising up their assault rifles as one snarled, "Who the fuck are you?"
"Ashley Williams, Special Tactics and Recon," she replied crisply. As long as she had the job, she might as well get some use from the title.
"A Spectre?", the guard snorted, "I thought the fucking Council was dead."
"They are," she agreed, doing her best to put an undertone of menace into her voice, "Which means we have more autonomy than usual."
The other guard sounded a bit less dismissive and a bit more afraid. "Uh, Mack," he asked tentatively, "Are you really sure we should be mouthing off to a Spectre? I've heard stories…"
"Fine," the guard apparently named Mack grumbled, opening up a connection on his omni-tool. "I'll call it in. Hey, sarge, we go this bi… This woman named Ashley Williams who claims to be a Spectre here with a couple of mercs."
"Well, find out what she wants," came the reply, a sarcastic woman's voice that didn't sound intimidated by the new arrivals.
Mack turned to Ashley and the marine answered his boss' question, "We heard this place has recently been taking delivery of some slaves." The guards looked nervous at that statement, and Ashley reassured them, "Don't worry, I know things work differently out here. I'm not looking to make trouble for you, just to find one person who may be a threat to galactic security."
The voice on the other end of the omni-tool was incredulous. "A slave is a threat to galactic security?"
"You're not cleared to know any more than that," Ashley deadpanned. "Now, if you'll just let me in to have a look around, we can keep things from getting unpleasant."
"What do you mean unpleasant?", asked the more skittish of the two guards, gripping his rifle bit tighter at her words.
"I mean that if you check your instruments, you'll see I've got a frigate in orbit over this house. Now if I have to, I'll have it turn this entire compound into molten slag, but while I don't think much of your boss, I'm sure there are at least a few innocent people here, so I'd rather you just let me in to find my target."
Actually, the unoccupied frigate was on auto-pilot and there was no way Ashley was blowing up a house with Sha'ira in it, but fortunately, the reputation Spectres had for ruthlessness seemed to work for her in this case. A minute passed while the sergeant scanned the skies for confirmation and then from the other end of omni-tool, the woman's voice said, "Let them in. I'll take care of it."
When they reached the house, a tall woman with a stony face, short black hair, and heavy combat armor was waiting for them flanked by two more guards with assault rifles to replace those left back at the gate. "Hello, Spectre," she said coldly, "I'm Sergeant Berkley. If you come with me, I can show you the new acquisitions. Prove to my satisfaction that one of them is the person you're looking for and you can take them. Try anything funny, and you and your ship will find out just how well-defended this house really is."
Ashley nodded. "What about your boss? They're not interested in seeing what's going on?"
"You're dealing with me," was all the sergeant said before leading their small group through the mansion. The interior was as excessively luxurious as the facade, filled with art and crystal that contrasted sharply with the rough group walking through it.
What Ashley saw when she got to the large foyer at the center of the house wasn't so beautiful though. Another guard stood half-way up one of a pair of curving staircases, his gun aimed at a dozen or so people clustered around a pool at their base. The slaves were a frightened lot, mostly human but with a couple of asari and a quarian thrown in, dressed shabbily for the most part, with several of them wearing restraining collars either to control their behavior or inhibit biotic usage.
What she didn't see though was Sha'ira, and the combination of her rage at this latest affront to decency and her worry overwhelmed her. She'd hoped to get to her lover before she ended the charade that this mission was about galactic security, but her patience was exhausted.
"Where's the Consort?!", she snarled, whirling suddenly on the guards. "She's not hear and I know you have her."
"I don't know who you're…" Sergeant Berkley didn't get a chance to finish the denial. Mid-way through her sentence, Zaeed quick-drew a heavy pistol from his side and put two bullets straight through the center of her unpleasant face.
She fell and even before her body could hit the ground, Ashley was moving. The Spectre drove a booted foot into the nearest guard's shin, sending him stumbling backwards before whirling to fire her own rifle at the man who had his weapon trained on the slaves. Taken by surprise at the sudden outbreak of violence, the guard had only started to swivel his weapon in their direction before the burst caught him full in the chest and his armored body tumbled down the staircase and fell into the pool at its base.
The third guard faired slightly better, managing to squeeze a shot off at Gorax that hit the krogan's shoulder guard. It didn't stop the mercenary though, and with a roar, he swung his shotgun like a club, cracking the man's helmet and hurling him to the ground several feet away. Meanwhile, the guard that Ashley had kicked had started to recover his footing, but not in time. Zaeed hit him with two shots to the chest that knocked him to the ground and followed up with a third to the head that covered the marble floor in his blood and brains.
The krogan moved to finish off the last man, but Ashley stopped him, barking, "Wait!", before Gorax could crush his head with an armored boot. The massive alien pulled back and Ashley aimed her gun at the prone guard's knees. "One more time," she snapped, "The Consort. Where is she?"
She didn't need to wait for an answer. Even as the terrified guard sputtered beneath her, a flash of movement caught Ashley's eye and what she saw made the marine forget all about him. Running down the staircase, an ugly bruise above her eye but with a smile spread across her beautiful face, was Sha'ira.
And now they've found each other, but this is hardly the end of their troubles. Stay tuned for more.